Welsh Journals

There can be no such doubt as to the scene which inspired Canto 86 of "In Memoriam." It was Barmouth and presumably in 1839, on the occa- sion of the poet's tour. On a beautiful evening the poet stands and gazes out to sea. Between two promontories the tide flows calmly along, a west wind gently wafts the rich fragrance of summer flowers after rain, the solemn shades of evening descend, and far away, bathed in the mysterious light of the setting sun, gleams the rising star. To the heart of the poet, lacerated by memories of his lost friend, comes a feeling of harmony long unknown. Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy tassell'd wood, And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows and blow The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death III brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odour streaming far, To where in yonder orient star A hundred spirits whisper "Peace." This evening at Barmouth was evidently a supreme and unforgettable spiritual experience. At Llanberis, Tennyson had no moments of such intense and sublime ecstasy, but in his poems there are several reminiscences of his stay there. It was at Llanberis that "Edwin Morris" was written, and Tennyson has made it the setting of his poem. He speaks of the "ripply shadows of the lisping lake," of the bracken rusted on the crags and of a ruined castle, presumably the old stronghold of Dolbadarn, When men knew how to build, upon a rock With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock. At the end of the poem the lover, fondly recalling his blissful rambles by the lake, says In the dust and drouth of London life She moves among my visions of the lake, While the prime swallow dips his wing, or then While the gold-lily blows, and overhead The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag. It would, of course, be foolish to apply these lines literally to the poet himself, but it is perhaps per- missible to read in them something of the delight which we know Tennyson to have felt in this mountain retreat. Though "Edwin Morris" is not one of Tennyson's greater poems, the last built line is striking in its beauty and fitness. Llanberis is also the scene of "The Golden Year," another of the early poems. The poet tells how he and "old James" had been up Snow- don, and on their descent found Leonard at Llan- beris. With him they crossed between Llyn Padarn and Llyn Peris and climbed the hill on the opposite side. The poem ends with a description of the blasting in the hills whose mighty echoes come as an effective contrast to the heated argu- ments which these puny mortals have just been putting forth He spoke; and high above, I heard them blast The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap And buffet round the hills, from bluff to bluff. Yet another reminiscence of Llanberis appears in "The Sisters." Tennyson revives the memory of the summer night when first he saw it by the gleam of lightning piercing the darkness, and draws from it support for the view that love at first sight for a face seen but a moment and then gone, though strange, is possible. Once, he says, when first I came on lake Llanberris in the dark, A moonless night with storm-one lightning-fork Flash'd out the lake; and tho' I loiter'd there The full day after, yet in retrospect That less than momentary thunder-sketch Of lake and mountain conquers all the day. The mention of Llanberis inevitably brings Snowdon to the mind, and this also figures in Tennyson's poetry. In the seventh part of "The Princess" the Lady Ida is shown mourning over the collapse of her ideals. She climbs to the roof and looking down sees her woman's sanctuary overrun by men. To emphasise her helplessness, Tennyson introduces as a simile the sudden storm which he once witnessed from the top of Snowdon as he gazed over the neighbouring mountains to the coast and the sea beyond. Ida is As one that climbs a peak to gaze O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, And suck the blinding splendour from the sand, And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world. Though no locality is this time specified, the hills of Wales again rise before Tennyson's eye in "Sir John Oldcastle." He pictures the zealous reformer who at the beginning of the fifteenth century has fled from the Tower and sought a refuge among the Welsh mountains. Oldcastle wanders about, enduring great hardships patiently and cheerfully, uplifted by his faith in God and his hope in the future. God is with me in this wilderness,